EAGER: Project Surya - Mitigation of Global and Regional Climate Change

University Of California-San Diego Scripps Inst Of Oceanography, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Surya is a scientific experiment aimed at quantifying the radiative forcing due to black carbon (BC) from biomass-fueled cooking and heating fires. Roughly 2.5 billion people depend on biomass burning for cooking and heating which contributes about 25% of the global BC emissions. Absorption of solar radiation by BC is estimated to contribute as much as 20% to 55% of the CO2 to global warming. The study will encompass a detailed analysis of the results of efforts to reduce BC emissions from 350 rural households in the densely populated Indo-Gangetic plains (IGP) region of Northern India. The reductions would be achieved by replacing traditional village cooking stoves with poor combustion efficiencies to modern stoves with higher efficiencies. The fundamental goal of the year-long study will be to collect and analyze observational data to test whether the effects of conversion to "clean" cooking on radiative forcing are discernable, and whether the net result warms or cools. The change in net radiative forcing will warm if the reduction in reflecting aerosol is greater than the reduction in absorbing aerosol, and vise versa. The hypothesis is that the net reduction will result in cooling. This is what will be tested in this proof-of-concept study. The principal investigator (PI) estimates a ratio significantly greater than one, of reduced absorbing aerosol to reflecting aerosol, which means that a massive conversion to clean cooking would have a significant negative feedback (cooling) to CO2-forced warming. His estimate must be tested with observations. This EAGER award will enable that test. If he is right, the science and applications will be transformative. The project is risky for several reasons, among them are the robustness of the measurement of the ratio, the difficulties of upscaling information to much larger, more heterogeneous regions in India, and the new IT data collection techniques developed for working in an environment like an Indian village. If successful, the payoff could be globally significant. Broader Impact: Project Surya could lead to the rapid reduction of warming aerosol and gases. With indoor pollution killing over a million people a year, global action to cut soot emissions could be of major and immediate benefit for both public health and the climate.